He had made his two heaps of notes--a larger and a smaller; his hand wavered undecidedly over them.
'I can trust you to do what you said you would?' she asked suddenly.
'No less--and no more. That's an essential part of my policy,' he assured her.
'And Mrs. Trevalla is free of Glowing Stars? And you'll tell her what you promised?'
'I'll take them over, with the liability. Yes, and I'll tell her.'
He spoke rather absently; his mind seemed to be on something else. When he spoke again, there was an odd--perhaps an unprecedented--embarrassment in his manner.
'I see my way to doing something with Glowing Stars. Money must go into it--the calls must be paid--but I think some of the money might come out again.' He looked at Peggy; he saw her gloriously triumphant eyes, her cheeks flushed with the intoxication of achievement. The impulse was on him to exalt her more. 'I should have done very well if I'd bargained with you for three thousand.'
'It would have seemed almost as impossible. And you wouldn't! You wanted more than market value for your pound of flesh!'
He pushed the smaller of the two heaps that he had made across to her with a swift motion of his hand; the hand trembled a little, but his voice was hard and dry.
'Take back the extra thousand and call it square, Miss Ryle,' said he.
Peggy laid down her cigarette and stared at the heap of notes he pushed across to her.
'What?' she exclaimed in the despair of blank astonishment; she could not grasp the idea.
'Take those back. I shall do very well with these.'
He took up his cigar again, and this time he lit it. To Peggy the room seemed to go round.
'On my word, I don't know. Your infernal pluck, I think,' he said in a puzzled tone.
'It might be a pleasant surprise to--to your friend,' he went on. 'And, if you'll let me do it, it will, Miss Ryle, be rather a pleasant change to me.'
He made her an odd answer--very odd, to come from him. 'Because of the look in your eyes, my dear.'
His tone was free from all offence now; he spoke as a father might. If his words surprised her to wonder, he had no better understanding of hers.
'You too, you too!' she whispered, and the eyes which had moved him grew misty.
'Come, don't refuse me,' he said. 'Take it back to your friend. He'll find a use for it.'